Paul Buchheit's idea for better file uploads on browsers -- anyone want to pledge to or develop it? - <AUTHOR> http://micropledge.com/projects/better-file-upload-plugin

<comment><USER2> I don't get it -- Flash is already ubiquitous. Why does Paul want to boil the ocean?

Even multi-file Flash uploaders with progress bar indicators are free and plentiful. My favorite: <http://www.element-it.com/MultiPowUpload.aspx>

The only trick is getting Flash to pass session variables or some other way for the server to authenticate the user.

</comment><comment><USER3> SWFUpload has worked awesomely for me:

<http://labb.dev.mammon.se/swfupload/>

<comment><USER4> That's pretty sweet! Good link -- I'll keep that in mind. (Though it doesn't do two of the things Paul was after: open a better file-select dialog, and do local data processing on the file before sending it.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://jupload.sourceforge.net/applet-basic.html>

Done.

Oh, right. No one likes Java. (I'm a little perplexed as to why the author defaulted to the nasty metal L&F).

<comment><USER4> For better or worse -- better, IMHO -- Buchheit's spec on his blog entry rules out Java. Quote: "Unfortunately, Java applets don't actually work, and after 11 years of not working, I'm not expecting that to change."

<comment><USER5> My experience is contrary to that. I've deployed applets to the general public with success. (No, not 100 percent, but the same can be said of javascript and flash.)

Try out the link for yourself, though.

<comment><USER4> Hmmm ... I guess I'm not the general public, but I'm running a fairly generic install of Firefox 2.0, and the page comes up with a big grey box with a red X in it. I'm not actually sure why this is, as I'm sure I've had some Java apps working in the past.

Update: Oh, the Java console shows something about an "UnsupportedClassVersionError".

<comment><USER6> That happens when you try to run a Java app that was compiled with a newer compiler on an older VM. Most likely, the demo was built with Java 1.6 and you've still got 1.5. It's working on my browser.

...It's also slow to load and incredibly clunky. Why, Swing, did you have to reimplement every native widget so that none of them look the way we expect? I think Paul's "no Java applets" remark is on the money here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "I'm serious about this, and willing to pay quite a bit of money to make it happen."

$17 does not strike me as a lot of money.

Has anyone used and had success with this micropledge site?

<comment><USER4> "$17 does not strike me as a lot of money". True. Obviously Paul hasn't pledged yet. :-)

microPledge is only a few days post-launch, so success stories are low in numbers just yet. But of course we look forward to them coming in slowly but surely.

<comment><USER7> Ah, well good luck then. Tallyho!</comment></comment></comment>


Things Programmers Say - <AUTHOR> https://henrikwarne.com/2016/11/24/things-programmers-say/ <comment><USER2> I'd lke to collect things programmers say during tutorials. I don't have a large enough twitter following for such a question to gain any traction, but this one I heard recently is what got me thinking about it:

"There is no such thing as a free cat." -Bob Tabor, MS Virtual Academy / DevU.</comment>


5 Marketing Books Every App Developer Needs to Read - <AUTHOR> http://www.mobileinternetrevolution.com/5-marketing-books-every-app-developer-needs-to-read/ <comment><USER2> Can anybody comment on "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials)"? I can't tell if it's a self-help type book or not...

<comment><USER3> Not self-help, just a discussion of how we're influenced and made to "comply," citing numerous academic studies.

See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influence_Science_and_Practice></comment></comment>


Web Scraping might land you in Jail - <AUTHOR> https://zeroequalsfalse.com/posts/webscraping-might-land-you-in-jail/ <comment><USER2> It also might not be.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2019/09/10/linke...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2019/09/10/linkedin- data-scraping-ruled-legal/#1ca89bb61b54)

</comment><comment><USER3> what about using something like proxycrawl? will that help in anything? They say it's safe

</comment><comment><USER4> Clickbait title unless you repeatedly circumvent explicit protections to keep you out of their systems (eg. IP bans and written warnings). Copyright infringement and ToS violations are both civil infractions, not criminal ones. It may get you sued, though.

</comment><comment><USER5> _cough_ python</comment>


Am I getting Craigslist scammed? - tech-historian https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/126350/am-i-getting-craigslist-scammed <comment><AUTHOR> There's a YouTuber by the name of "Kitboga" who makes a living messing with refund scammers. It's not exactly the same scam, but it's similar enough: they convince people that they've been over-refunded, and try to con the target into repaying the difference. Kitboga is kind of obnoxious, but I do appreciate his devotion to wasting scammers' time. If I were targeted by this sort of Craigslist scammer, I'd probably mess with them until I got bored.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best way for kids to build a mobile app? - <AUTHOR> My daughter (5th grade) wants to build an mobile app as part of her school project. I think there must be some options for kids to build an app instead of writing it in Swift or Objective-C (iPhone). One thing we found is "Thunkable". Any other options? HN readers, any recommendations? Thanks! <comment><USER2> The easiest way to run code on a mobile device is to serve it as HTML. A simple way to do this is from a laptop over the local LAN with Python's simpleHTTPServer or Python3's http.server. Any mobile (or non-mobile) device can connect to the 192.168.XXX.XXX:port so long as it has a web browser.

This avoids a dependency on the app store, complex tooling, emulators, fees, registrations, etc. It touches on many topics more practical and widely applicable than the iOS ecosystem...and a Hello World can be up and running in a few minutes. Short feedback loops are great...even for children.

A hack, no doubt, but does everything important except tick the "built an iOS app" box on a future college education.

Good luck.

<comment> a-saleh Well, if there is an easy enough pwa framework, yhen it might be almost indistinguishable for most people :)

<comment><USER2> Usually for me

      function > indistinguishability

when I'm trying to get something done. That's where I would start with a 5th grader.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd suggest a webpage on github pages that can be viewed on mobile.

As much as I hate to say this in this over competitive world, it would look good on a resume if she could point to having an early interest in development.

Just never remind her of that fact.

</comment><comment><USER4> You might want to explore Exponent/RN. The basic JSX UI syntax is easy to pick up, and JavaScript is a great beginner language.

Plus, you can try on device without needing to deal with tooling and emulators. And you can start writing code in-browser using using Expo snack ([https://snack.expo.io](https://snack.expo.io))

</comment><comment><USER5> Well that's a pretty high bar for a 5th grader. I would suggest Ionic[1] + Chrome (Dev Tools Mobile View). It's definitely more approachable than Xcode.

[1] [https://ionicframework.com/docs/](https://ionicframework.com/docs/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Creo from Creolabs seems quite accessible, but isn't that simple either.

It comes with a player though - you can create the app and play it back on your device without having to register it through the app store or Google Play.

<comment><USER6> Same for free C#-based Xamarin, but this is based on Visual Studio.

LiveCode comes to my mind as well which is close to HyperCard/Flash, but needs programming for any interactivity...

How about an iBook if this is for Apple? IBook Author is free and allows for interactive elements like quizzes and embedded HTML pages. Pretty nifty, free, but only for iOS again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Could always do a Mobile friendly web app... Would be easier to "deploy" and you get all platforms at one go.

</comment><comment><USER8> A search for "thunkable alternatives" yields some alts that require adult curating. Sorry, I don't have experience with any.

</comment><comment><USER9> html+js?</comment>


Google Classroom - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/edu/classroom/ <comment><USER2> I think the public educational IT system should not be outsourced to the private sector, where schools completely lose control of the data and depend more or less on the good will of the company. University courses should not be organized by Facebook and pupils should not be forced to use IT systems of non-trustworthy companies like Google, which earn money by profiling their customers. Maybe my view is too German, but I think of education as an sovereign function of the state, where everything (theoretically) can be controlled by the citizens (yes, I know that this is some kind of optimistic). We should teach kids to think critical about centralization of data and knowledge and show them how to manage their digital lives with free and open tools which respect the users rights.

<comment><USER3> I work in IT at a major Canadian University. I hear what you are saying, but the solutions provided by universities IT departments are usually sub-par to completely not useful. There have been attempts in the past to partner with other schools and develop solutions jointly but are often cost over run disasters.

It is really hard to attract any top development talent, or even try and convince current employees to stay up to date with current trends. Lots of development teams are stuck in old waterfall mentalities on huge java stacks.

We have laws that protects students data and doesn't allow us to host student or even employee information on U.S. servers. Provincial laws and mandates handed down from deans because of the Homeland Security Act hinder the use of any sort of SaaS's. It makes it really hard and disheartening to provide and develop good solutions.

I can't suggest someone go use certain survey tools, or use mailchimp to handle a small campaign for example. I am not supposed to promote the use of Google Drive or Dropbox for day to day use with other staff because of fear they will start storing data they aren't supposed to on it. We often end up with sub-par self hosted copies of great applications, but no one wants to use them. Google classroom looks really cool but there is no way any schools in this province would be allowed to use it.

<comment><USER4> I work at a medium US university and I can say that the thick java stacks and waterfall is a huge part of the sources of headaches in my job.

I've got my team quite agile for a Uni development team but we still face lots and lots of problems with FERPA(US student privacy rules), and trying to work with much less agile internal teams. Most of the rest of the local developers are 40-60 and very resistant to any kind of change. (seriously using .net instead of java was hugely controversial)

<comment><USER5> Could you or the parent express what you dislike about backends written in Java? I think there tends to be a pretty negative stigma associated with it, but I haven't really seen why. Personally, I've worked with both C# .Net and Java backends, and it's really a horse a piece. Is performance the issue? Security? What is the general dislike of Java about?

<comment><USER3> I was just saying it off the cuff as sort of a comment on giant waterfall departments that never create anything great or effective. I don't really have any hate for Java and there is a lot of great software created with it (J2EE was my intro to IS development), just the kind of culture and staff it attracts in this sector. Everyone is in their cubical doing java never innovating anything with no care in the world to ever break out of the status- quo. When they do hire new staff it is usually someone who has been doing that Java at banks or for the government, for 5-8 years and it just continues. Then these people move up into the more senior positions and help cement the culture. Being on more of the web-side it is just frustrating.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, you hit the nail on the head with this explanation though.

<comment><USER5> You both raise fair points. I do think the community is typically construed that way, and it's probably accurate to say that a lot of the older Waterfall devs would be a part of that community (or C/C++).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Senior at the International Academy here (a public high school in Michigan). One of my classes uses Google Classroom.

I think that Google truly took a "Google Plus" look and morphed that into a website for teachers. I love how it has a clean and easy to use UI. The assignments are on a side bar, announcements are clearly displayed in a "stream". You can easily post a message to your class, and you have access to everyone's email (making it easy to communicate).

Teachers in my school have used three platforms. Moodle, Google Classroom, and Edmodo. Quite frankly, I have come to like Edmodo much more. They're identical to Facebook, but the layout is so much better than the alternatives (in my preference). Edmodo has truly thought everything out.

</comment><comment><USER7> Crittenden Middle School in Mountain View has switched over to this, we love it. The amount of parent/student/teacher collaboration and transparency is unparalleled.

BTW: they're not using Chrome Books, but some kind of fancy HP Android tablets.

<comment><USER8> Having experience with it, how do the parents connect in? Our board uses Apps for Education, but I don't have a parent account.

I suppose I could get in the game by using my child's account, but often it is helpful to interact directly with teachers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you are not a teacher or student actively using Google Classroom, you should pay attention to the comments from teachers and students here. Or go talk to a local teacher for their impression.

I've been doing that and the general response is overwhelmingly positive. Others have already stated why. I would like to amplify those sentiments:

\+ Many alternative solutions on the market are generally considered to be sub-par, such as Moodle, Blackboard, etc. (I personally love the open source concept behind Moodle and have high hopes for them, but their implementation is oudated; fortunately, they know this and are working on it.)

\+ Home-grown solutions are generally very poor for all kinds of reasons, including inability to find technical talent, bureaucracy and mismanagement, lack of budget, lack of project management, etc.

\+ Google has a strong positive brand with teachers. While privacy concerns are growing, the overall community doesn't have the same stigma with Google that many readers of HN have. Google Apps for Education (GAFE) already had a decent footprint within schools and Google Classroom is piggybacking off of that penetration.

With that said, concerns about privacy, being operated by a separate for- profit, and comprehensiveness of features are great points and present ample opportunities for aspiring competitors. In some ways, Google Classroom just stepped up the game. If this causes anyone to release even better software for teachers and students, that's a great thing for teachers and students.

</comment><comment><USER10> If this is a Blackboard competitor, that's good news. Google definitely has the bankroll and patent magazine to go toe-to-toe with them, which could open up a lot of options in the higher education space.

<comment><USER11> I doubt it. Blackboard is a full blown Learning Management System (LMS). This looks more like an Edmodo competitor -> pretty much like a Hangouts for Classrooms.

<comment><USER12> Given the hatred students and many teachers have for Blackboard, it may not need to do as much, if it provides ways to work without a "Learning Management System". Occasionally, the "system" approach gets ousted by something simpler, more general, and more transparent. I'm thinking of Novell's old integrated systems for managing print/file/document sharing, email, accounts, etc., which became less important and integrated into operating systems and supplanted by web-based sharing. So many institutions relied on Novell for that stuff, and then...eventually there were none left.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If I was a teacher, there's no way I would use this... privacy concerns aside, there's nothing to suggest that Google won't suddenly shut it down in two or three years when whoever is maintaining it gets bored of it, like Google has with so many other projects.

<comment><USER14> Why would a teacher worry about something that might happen 3 years down the line? You only need this to work for a particular term or semester.

<comment><USER15> Because learning new products each semester or term is a PITA? Just imagine how long books last in a curriculum, there is nothing that iterates quickly in education. A question though is do all teachers use the same software in a school or is it all ad-hoc?

<comment><USER14> It's not really new products very semester, is it? We're talking about an unlikely event that might happen sometime in future after a few years.

A lot of professors have adopted Piazza is a relatively short time because it offers real benefits. And you could make the exact same argument about the longevity of Piazza.

I think we ought to applaud anything that makes life easier for educators because the reality is that most academic software, or at least blackboard which seems to terribly popular and is what I've used extensively, is a terrible mess. I'm not dismissing the concerns about privacy and longevity but they seem to putting potential future problems ahead of real present benefits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have a younger brother in high school that has to use Google Classroom/Chromebooks/Google whatnot. Ask him anything through me.

What I've heard so far:

\- It sometimes acts weirdly

\- When it emails an assignment, the full text of the assignment is put in the title, resulting in comically massive titles.

\- Using it at the same time as a personal gmail account is strange/not fun

\- It doesn't have as many features as Edmodo (what the school was using before)

</comment><comment><USER17> I got into the demo over the summer, and I was pretty underwhelmed. They list the features on the front page there, and that's exactly what they have. So in other words, you can manage a feed of assignments ("X is due on Tuesday", "Here is a link to a video!") and some very simplistic google docs control. I really expected something on the level of Canvas or Moodle, but it's clearly just a few convenience features for running GAfE.

<comment><USER18> My thoughts exactly. I am in charge of Canvas at our school, and we are deploying Google Apps for Ed. next year. Not thinking of using Classroom at all - at least not with the current feature set.

<comment><USER19> On the other hand, at my school we ALREADY have a lot of teacher using Google apps with their students. The clever ones have been able to cobble together something decent using gmail, google drive, calendar, etc.

Google Classroom streamlines what they were already doing. And it will allow some less-technically-savvy teachers to do some of the same things.

<comment><USER17> And I think it has a strong sell for just that - It has good features now, I just want MORE features. I'm hoping this is just the start of something bigger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As much as I would love for educational institutions (and government in general) to fund open source projects to solve their needs, that doesn't seem very realistic right now. Maybe when startup culture becomes the norm. The people who make decisions about technology purchases in education are, in my experience, non-technical and highly risk averse. They pay absurd prices for outdated software. There is little pressure to create a better product. I have to use Moodle for my teaching, and I'm sure anything Google creates will be far superior. This was at the top of my startup ideas list, but I'm glad someone is working on it.

<comment><USER21> The problem with open source software in academia and education is the price. The cost of hiring a developer to maintain and support a piece of software is more often than not far more than the cost of a software license from a company that provides decent quality support and customer service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I never quite understood why everybody thinks storage should be in the local server and cannot be provided by a private company.

IMHO, storage is a commodity.

Would you argue that schools need their own power generators because otherwise they'll be submitted to private companies? Should schools also have their own satellites and internet connections?

If the data is sensitive why not just encrypting it when is stored the same way we do when we need to transmit something over the wire?

Now, from the school POV I think if they go for a private solution they should demand open standards (avoid being locked in) and appropriate SLAs.

<comment><USER23> Because if all the computation is still happening on the remote server then that remote server has access to whatever encryption key was used. That defeats the whole purpose of what you're suggesting. Which means you have to shuttle the encrypted data to some private server, decrypt it, and then operate on it which means you might as well just host it locally. The only way this works is if we get practical homomorphic encryption at which point storage truly becomes a commodity and that's when Google loses all interest in hosting that data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> My university has GApps, and also it has a longstanding Moodle platform. Moodle is awful. It's much better than it used to be, but it's still clunky and ugly. If this is Google's solution, I'd like to see it take off. It'd be easy to integrate and switch from Moodle.

<comment><USER25> I'm also not a big fan of Moodle, but it does have the advantage of being self-hosted and open-source. Moving student data to a cloud provider adds a bunch of legal complexity, at least here (Denmark). I can use anything I want for non-student data, such as syllabi, assignments, notes, lecture slides, and the like. But I don't think I could have students submit formal, graded assignments through a Google cloud product, or put the actual grades there. Relying on a third-party service would also probably be ruled out unless it comes with some kind of deprecation guarantee (e.g. we're guaranteed at least one academic year lead-time for notification of major changes, discontinuation, or fees).

We do use MS Office 365 for email and calendaring, but I believe they (Microsoft) got some sort of stamp of approval from the education ministry first, and it does come with a long-term service agreement (it isn't free, though).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Damn it Google. Over the summer I approached the government of my country to build a simple learning management system since they were about to start using tablets at the secondary schools here. Nothing has been finalised yet but I have a working model.

If they go with what I am working on for them they would be able to run analytics across all secondary schools and they would own their data.

<comment><USER27> Send a resume to Google.

That's life in business.

<comment><USER26> Funny. When I lived in the U.S. I was called by a Google recruiter.

I don't see Google besting me here where it comes to the tailored needs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> If you want to use open source software for this, Google has released Course Builder[1] a while back. Caveat: It uses App Engine, as far as I know.

[1] [https://code.google.com/p/course- builder/](https://code.google.com/p/course-builder/)

</comment><comment><USER29> Personally I'd love to have this as a part of my normal Google Apps. It would be a neat way to create tutorials and documentation for my teammates.

</comment><comment><USER30> Does it require Google Account for each student?

What if student doesn't want account, and doesn't agree with Google Terms of Service?

<comment><USER31> Of course it does.

It also requires the institution to have a Google Apps for Education account, which usually means that the University email accounts are all Google Accounts anyways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> 10 years ago, people would have welcomed this. Today, the brand Google is a red flag for any school that cares about their reputation and any parent who cares about their child's privacy.

It's utterly unsellable unless Google follows the old "evil" Microsoft route and simply bribes schools. And even that won't be enough to counter the shit storm that will hit any school that delivers the privacy of it's students into the hands of Google.

(The link sends me to the Dutch version of this. Google is seriously tone deaf it they think they can still sell this here.)

<comment><USER33> The reality of Google's brand image is different.

Schools don't buy software based on privacy and the privacy policies of much of the software being used by schools is often worse.

Maybe it won't sell in EU, but you don't need the EU to run a successful profitable business.

<comment> chestnut-tree _" Schools don't buy software based on privacy"_

They should do in my opinion. I find it depressing that so many people overlook or dismiss privacy concerns, particularly where kids are concerned.

The kids who are asked to use Google classroom have no choice in the matter since the decision is made by the school. That means they must sign up for a Google Account regardless of whether they want one. It's the responsibility of the adults to evaluate the impact of the software they choose. And privacy should be one of the top concerns for anyone evaluating software for educational use in my view.

Google's educational privacy policy [1] is carefully worded to state that they do not mine the content you upload to Google classroom ("Your data is yours"). What they don't state is whether they track the activities of school students and what this actually entails. How is that data aggregated? Who sees that data inside Google? Is the data anonymised? Or is it tied to an individual student?

Given that you must enter a date of birth to create a Google Account, Google is capturing very specific and personal details of thousands, perhaps millions of students. Over time, Google will have amassed a staggering amount of information about the behaviour and activities of these students and will continue to do so into their adult lives (if the students continue to use their Google Account).

If Google isn't tracking the online activities of Google classroom users, why do they not simply state that?

[1] [https://www.google.com/edu/privacy.html](https://www.google.com/edu/privacy.html)

<comment><USER33> Since I volunteer in school science and computer lab, I have observed first hand how schools simply do not have the bandwidth to run any kind of IT. Even something as simple as installing a single new application on all of the lab computers is beyond the teachers of the classroom.

That means most schools pretty much have to adopt some kind of cloud based solution that allows network administration of all of the computers used by the students.

I don't know why Google's privacy policy isn't worded the way you would like, but one reason is probably that wording it in a very strict way prevents any kind of evolution of the software product. For example, if you say "we don't track activities of school students", what does that mean? Does it mean the classroom software can't notify teachers about student behavior problems? Can't show a statistical dashboard for them? That 'auto-suggest' and Google Now-style assistive features (e.g. "You have an upcoming assignment due, and estimates based on your past speed of doing them says you should start today.") can't be offered?

<comment> chestnut-tree _"...if you say "we don't track activities of school students", what does that mean?"_

It means whatever Google explains it to mean. Google can either be vague about it, or they can be clear and informative. Google is the one collecting the data. Only they know what is captured and for what purpose. It's their responsibility to explain clearly what they track and record. All of the questions you pose are ones that Google can answer.

I disagree that strict wording prevents the evolution of the software. It might prevent Google from mining user data in order to build a profile of user likes and behaviour. But I consider this type of data capture and analysis to be extend beyond the boundaries of simply improving a piece of software.

<comment><USER33> Profiling student behavior in the classroom could in fact be used to improve software. Teachers often construct a profile of students. If you go to a parent teacher conference, the teacher will often present you with a dossier of boiled down things your child does well, things they do poorly, and how to improve, and this is often culled from examining classwork and homework.

Giving a teacher a kind of dashboard based on profiling work habits, could be useful for both the teacher and the student.

I think it is better to enumerate what you don't do, rather than enumerate only what you will do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> What I dislike about Google Classroom is students need institution email address for logging in.

<comment><USER35> Why does that bother you?

<comment><USER36> I will post for my kids who suffer under the same restriction, that it's yet another email address they don't/won't use, but the admin types will only use it for CYA purposes. So risk adverse administrator sends email to the unused address that its "dress like a hippie day" on thursday and 99% of the students don't check an unused addrs so they never know.

"Obviously" they just need an email forward feature, but of course that would require admin effort for the kids that screw it up or intentionally create mail loops or mess with another kids account, so for CYA reasons that can't be done.

So the net effect is we've gone from a modest amount of paper correspondence to no correspondence at all because the tech doesn't work and nobody is interested enough in the message to fix it.

Another problem is for privacy reasons each kids email looks like "a java GUID"@something.k12.edu and nobody wants to use an address or username like that. ts impossible to remember their email addrs or passwords (they're written down on stickers on their devices) but I think it would be funny if its not "a java GUID" but actually their SS numbers run thru md5 or something even dumber from a security perspective.

As an adult, I have an email address like that from my cable company. I don't even know what my cable company email addrs is, much less its password. I've never used it and never will. God only knows how much marketing spam the cable co has sent to it. Maybe electronic bills too, who knows.

<comment><USER35> If the student account _does_ support forwarding, would that put to rest all of your concerns?

I think it's a false comparison to say it's like your cable address; a school has a multitude of good reasons for wanting to send email to its students. A cable company has mostly terrible reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Usually it goes like this:

In-house solutions -> Centralized commercial offering -> Open source installed on premises

</comment><comment><USER38> Well, I can't even take it seriously, because I fully suspect that 3 to 5 years down the road Google loses interest in the product and decides to drop it. Then all the investment the schools and teachers have made is lost.

If Google didn't have a habit of killing their own products I'd maybe take the time to actually think about their products.

</comment><comment><USER39> A good way to push the chromebook

<comment><USER40> Speaking of... I saw this on the Chromebook page "Chromebooks start at just $249 with a $30 management fee per device."

Does Apple or other vendors charge a similar "management fee" to this? Unless I'm missing something, the fees will surpass the per-unit pricing before the first year.

<comment><USER41> It's a one-time fee to enroll the device in their MDM service, not an ongoing charge.

<comment><USER40> It appears you are correct, but it seems it was a change from early pricing models:

"It's a big change from the pricing model Google offered with Chrome OS in the past: The first generation of Chromebooks came with monthly fees for business and school accounts -- $28 a month per device for businesses and $20 a month for schools. With the new plan, organizations pay only the single flat fee for the lifetime of each device. "

[http://www.computerworld.com/article/2471845/cloud- computing...](http://www.computerworld.com/article/2471845/cloud- computing/google-s-chrome-os--the-dirty-little-secret-about-those-new- devices.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> How does this get around the US FERPA and COPPA regulations?

</comment><comment><USER43> this looks awesome.

</comment><comment><USER44> play

</comment><comment><USER45> Classroom is something that competes directly with Hapara's [1] Teacher Dashboard product that they charge at $4/student

[1] hapara.com/products/#teacher-dashboard

</comment><comment><USER46> Why tie yourself to the current state of technology (keyboard, pc, printer), which may be defunct in 8-15 years?

Let the kids learn to use computers but limit it specifically to that. In the classroom emphasis should be on teaching the subject (and let them use pencil, pen and paper).

And I'm appalled that public schools now teach computer skills but have abandoned cursive writing.

<comment><USER47> Why should schools spend time on cursive? Does it add value for the students? The last time I used cursive for something other than a signature was in elementary school.

<comment><USER48> Cursive handwriting, when done with proper technique, is faster than block and does not cause hand cramps or wrist pain.

<comment><USER47> And still much slower than typing. I see insufficient value to learn cursive in a modern society.

<comment><USER48> Yes, typing is usually faster than cursive. However, most keyboards are not ergonomic and years of use at high speeds will most likely lead to RSI or at least sore wrists. And there are still be plenty of times in life where writing something by hand is more appropriate than typing it up.

<comment><USER47> You only get RSI if you type vastly more than you could write by hand. As for the times when typing is inappropriate, those are relatively short notes for which cursive is unnecessary. So far in my life I have come across 0 legitimate uses for cursive.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jfnewbery/what-did-bitcoin-core-contributors-ever-do-for-us-39fc2fedb5ef <comment><USER3> Why do people seem to assume that those most capable of implementing the cryptography, networking, or other code are also those most capable of understanding the economics of cryptocurrencies or determining their future?

Most of the arguments against the core team revolve around the economics and future of the coin, but the tech team seems to think that somehow their coding experience gives them insight into that.

Bitcoin seems like technically great but it fails on many of the economic aspects (e.g. making a currency with a fixed amount basically ensures it can never be used to write long term counteracts in).

<comment><USER4> > Why do people seem to assume that those most capable of implementing the > cryptography, networking, or other code are also those most capable of > understanding the economics of cryptocurrencies or determining their future?

I guess I'll give the blunt answer: many proponents of cryptocurrency have views on economics, politics, society, law, and contracts that are ignorant of the way those things really work. Many really do believe that currencies, transactions, and contracts can be implemented entirely by computer programs and that governments and courts should have no jurisdiction over such things.

If you don't believe me, go to some of the active crypto forums and get involved in political discussions. You'll see an astounding mix of techno- utopianism, extreme libertarianism, and baseless conspiracy theories about fiat money and governments in general.

The blockchain is an interesting technical achievement, and so are smart contracts, but they are not a replacement for laws and governments. Unfortunately, a lot of people think they are. Some people even insist that bitcoin doesn't have governance, but that's clearly not the case because the current controversy about the core developers is exactly about governance.

I bring this up because these kinds of beliefs are the reason people in the bitcoin community think the programmers who implement bitcoin are capable of solving the economic problems -- they reject the idea that there are any economic or social problems facing bitcoin that can't be solved with the underlying technology. They don't accept that these are social problems with social solutions.

<comment><USER5> I've never used bitcoin but one of the core appeals as I understood it was mathematically limited supply to create an inflation proof currency. There seem to be lots of fluctuations in the price but eventually it hit a point of relative stability (in theory at least) with value that increases slightly relative the rate that the dollar inflates.

If that's the case then it certainly does the job.

There are a lot of people out there who are very aware of how their saved money loses value and actively want an alternative that feels "safe". I don't know that Bitcoin is that alternative, but it's definitely trying to be and even I have to admit has been far more successful than I ever would have expected.

<comment><USER4> The cap on mining is actually a good example of an inflexible technical solution for a problem that is better solved through flexible governance. There are several problems with it:

Inflation can be a good thing. It can be used to combat deflation, and the absence of inflation can lead to stagnation via the paradox of thrift. There are certain central bank policies that encourage inflation and are known to work pretty well, including QE, which was demonized by a lot of people but has now been proven an effective aid in the recovery from the 2008 crash.

The bitcoin approach focuses on the money supply only, but there are other factors to inflation. There is general agreement among economists that the money supply is the key driver of inflation in the long term, but in the short term, other factors can be involved.

Inflation is possible with a static supply of money, because the amount of money in circulation (versus the amount of money in savings accounts or bonds, or otherwise locked up) can change.

Inflation can also happen even with a static supply of money and no changes in the amount of money in circulation. An example is an oil price shock, caused by an embargo: oil is an input into many manufacturing processes, as well as people's cars, so a general increase in the prices of goods and services can be expected.

So, the bitcoin approach takes away some valuable monetary policy tools and it doesn't actually prevent inflation in the short term. People shouldn't believe that their bitcoins are protected from inflation.

<comment><USER6> I have replied to a similar thread on HN recently here is the link.

Inflation the Hidden Tax

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14828655](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14828655)

<comment><USER7> I don't understand what the big deal is there. I can understand it in a hyperinflation situation, but when inflation is ~2%, surely this hidden tax is insignificant compared to the more visible, explicit taxes?

<comment><USER6> let's do some assumptions:

\- the 2% inflation number is completely wrong and real inflation is around 5%~10%

\- with no government monetary intervention we should have deflation let's assume around 5%

the delta is now 10%~15% looks less insignificant.

<comment><USER7> How long does it take for new money to get into the hands of the average person? I'd think a couple of months. A 15% inflation delta then means an "invisible tax" of maybe 3%. Not very important. And that's ignoring the highly questionable nature of those stated assumptions.

<comment><USER6> I have seen studies where it could take up to 2 years for the new money to completely penetrate the economic system.

Unfortunately currently don't have the links, I will try to post it later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some context would help here.

<comment><USER9> A meme has developed among some in Bitcoin - "Fire Core", aka fire the core dev team who have contributed most of the code to the canonical Bitcoin repo ([http://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin](http://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin)) and stewarded Bitcoin for the last few years ([https://bitcoincore.org](https://bitcoincore.org)).

The argument is that they've moved too slow on important things like scalability, blocked a simple blocksize increase hard fork that would have added capacity, and that as a result Ethereum is catching up and on the verge of overtaking Bitcoin ([http://duckduckgo.com?q=flippening](http://duckduckgo.com?q=flippening)).

The counterargument is that there's no other technically credible team in Bitcoin, despite all the prior attempts to "fire" and replace Core - <USER2> XT, Bitcoin Unlimited, etc. - and that "firing" Core is akin to killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

<comment><USER10> > The counterargument is that there's no other technically credible team in > Bitcoin

You forgot the most important counterargument. That they _did_ move extremely fast on scalability. They released a masterpiece of engineering, SegWit, which doubles the blocksize, improves efficiency, enables future efficiency gains, and a laundry list of other improvements ... all while being a softfork. And, IIRC, that was all developed, tested, and released in _very_ short order.

<comment><USER11> SegWit is in use by LiteCoin for a year already and the first proposal for Bitcoin was at least two years ago.

<comment> the-dude Compared to changes of traditional currencies, two years is incredibly fast.

<comment><USER12> What? Central banks can change fundamental properties about a currency overnight. i.e. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_franc#2011.E2.80.932014:...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_franc#2011.E2.80.932014:_big_movements_and_capping)

<comment><USER13> Moving is a knob is a lot different than building a knob.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This "fire Core" situation reminds me of Uber. You can be killing it 24/7 and still get fired if you cause enough non-technical damage.

<comment><USER4> Bitcoin is supposed to be a currency, so there are many non-technical aspects of it that need to be properly handled. If the people working on the code take it upon themselves to make the non-technical decisions too, they need to be held responsible for the outcome.

This really gets at the heart of my dislike for cryptocurrency -- most proponents believe it's supposed to be decentralized and free from the control of government, but it's actually centralized under the control of a small group of unelected programmers (who seem to misunderstand how human societies, currencies, and contracts actually work), and there is no recourse when they make bad decisions except to fork the blockchain and the code. It's really a step backwards in terms of governance compared to, say, fiat currency with democratic governance. This applies to most cryptocurrencies I've seen, not just bitcoin.

<comment><USER15> It's not, though; the developers can write the code, but they can't force people to upgrade.

<comment><USER14> They can withhold features that people want by refusing to code them, which is what one of the controversies is about.

<comment> vertex-four But other people can code them, and people as a whole can choose what software they want to run?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is the first I heard of pruning, I had to delete bitcoinqt when it got too big for my laptops SSD over a year ago.

</comment><comment><USER17> "What did X ever do for us?" is the standard catch phrase of this guy in any pirate movie wanting to take command of the ship.

It's not the words of somebody who wants to help anybody, just somebody wanting the power.

<comment><USER18> It is clearly satire and a Monty Python reference, how can you be so wrong ?

<comment><USER19> Many (maybe even most) of the misunderstandings on HN have to do with people talking across national or regional lines without being aware of it. I don't know, but it would be natural if that were the case here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The whole point of open source software is that you can fork a project away from the original developers.

<comment><USER4> But the point of a currency is to be a stable and widely accepted medium of exchange. Forking undermines both of those goals.

If the US dollar forked, or an EU country left the Euro, it would widely be considered a disaster and a failure of politics and governance. Why should bitcoin be held to a different standard?

<comment><USER21> Just seems like part of an evolutionary process. Very rarely is software released where version 1.0 is perfect. Maybe if government currencies allowed for these things, they would also be better by now.

This is part of the reason why bitcoin remains highly speculative. People point this out like it's a bad thing - the only people who have it are just investors, speculating. But this is part of the process that bootstraps bitcoin's value, so that when it does become more practical to use, actual value is being transferred.

<comment><USER4> > Just seems like part of an evolutionary process. Very rarely is software > released where version 1.0 is perfect. Maybe if government currencies > allowed for these things, they would also be better by now.

Let's use the US dollar as an example. In what ways do you think it could be improved if people could fork it?

<comment><USER21> As one example, maybe we would have an alternative to ACH, which would allow money to be settled in seconds, instead of several business days. Maybe we could have this at the protocol level (banks) instead of having to use private 3rd party software (Venmo) which emulates this feature but reduces our privacy.

<comment><USER22> [https://www.zellepay.com/](https://www.zellepay.com/) [https://www.zellepay.com/participating-banks-and-credit- unio...](https://www.zellepay.com/participating-banks-and-credit-unions)

<comment><USER21> "1 Transactions made between financial institutions in the Zelle NetworkSM typically complete within minutes. If your recipient does not have access to Zelle through their bank or credit union, transactions could take between 1 and 3 days to complete.

Zelle is available to U.S. bank account holders only."

<comment><USER22> The participating banks count for a majority share of US bank accounts.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Erroll Garner, the First Artist to Sue a Major Label and Win - <AUTHOR> https://variety.com/2019/music/news/the-true-story-of-erroll-garner-the-first-artist-to-sue-a-major-label-and-win-1203413083/ <comment><USER2> Great article! Erroll Garner is definitely my favorite jazz pianist, I think he definitely deserves some more love in Jazz history. The dude couldn't read music and was improvising stuff like this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLLWN9x3Yis](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLLWN9x3Yis)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OCJgP7_-fE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OCJgP7_-fE)

Edit: Erroll Garner's story is a great one if anyone wants to take a read:

I just find it funny, I was studying some of these piano transcriptions and I SERIOUSLY was disgusted at the stuff he was able to play. Like, one has to wonder if Erroll actually had 3 hands at some points, while practicing these masterpieces... Interestingly enough he was a short man... How on earth did he play some of these things?!?

"Short in stature (5 ft 2 in), Garner performed sitting on multiple telephone directories."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erroll_Garner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erroll_Garner)

<comment><USER3> You should check out Michel Petrucciani.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Petrucciani](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Petrucciani)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why are record companies still attractive to musicians today?

In the past, selling music meant having access to capital equipment (the vinyl presses), access to marketing budgets, and access to the record shop inventories.

Now, music can "pressed" for free by Spotify, Apple Music et all, shelf space is not limited (computer storage is cheap!), and the marketing can be done online more cheaply (I assume).

With all these stories of successful artists in the past (like Erroll Garner) and in the present (like Taylor Swift) being chained by their record companies, why do present day artists sign with a record label?

I'm sure I'm missing some key facet of the business, what is it?

<comment><USER5> Marketing. Superstars aren't (possibly never were) natural, they're the product of a lot of time and effort getting their look, their feel, their etc all just right. This takes time and effort, but when it works, the results are huge.

Think of Record Companies as the VC Funds of the rock and roll world. Yeah, it's possible to bootstrap, but why bootstrap when you can get a cash and publicity injection?

<comment><USER6> There are tons of great artists that you've never heard of. There are tons of mediocre artists who people can't avoid listening to.

The key difference between these artists is marketing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Erroll Garner was a true master at playing piano. When Liberace played "Misty" it was something remarkable, but when Garner plays it that's another experience altogether.

Just watch this performance and be blown away: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_tAU3GM9XI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_tAU3GM9XI)

</comment><comment><USER8> Eroll Garner is one of my most favorite pianists. Plus, as a Lindy Hop dancer it's super great to hear his music and dance to it.

Nowadays, I love Gordon Webster and of course... Stephanie Trick and Paolo Alderighi.

</comment><comment><USER9> Unreadable on mobile due to all the tracking.

</comment><comment><USER10> Expect a lot fewer individuals to win against big corporations now that the conservatives got a stranglehold on the courts in the US.

<comment><USER11> Big companies legislating regulatory capture of markets is not restrained to any single party. It is however a growing problem. Changing your tone may find you more support in this overwhelmingly popular notion.</comment></comment>


Deep Learning with Emojis (not Math) - <AUTHOR> https://tech.instacart.com/deep-learning-with-emojis-not-math-660ba1ad6cdc <comment><USER2> OP here, happy to answer any questions</comment>


Ask HN: What do you use to handle auth in side projects? - <AUTHOR> I am working on a side project and want to secure an ExpressJS API.  I really do not want to roll my own auth, but would love to be able to own my own user table -- not just federate out to Facebook/Google/Twitter/etc.<p>I cannot imagine I am alone in this.  What are you using for your auth?  What are the pros and cons of your solution?  Is it worth it to go with a service like Okta/Auth0? <comment><USER2> Honestly I still use passport with express and create a local strategy which is easy and you can keep it secure without writing much code. I dislike the idea of handing auth off to Google/Facebook in general, but I also don't generally work on anything where people would want them involved anyway.

What is nice about passport is that it makes it easy to support local auth along with many third parties if you need it, all without having to write lots of code. Not saying it is perfect, but with an expressjs app it is really simple and lets you maintain a user table etc even if you use a third party. Also with an API, I'd be really remiss to outsource auth, it just complicates things and honestly doesn't really add to security. That is of course, if you follow solid fundamentals.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. How do you handle things like password resets,etc?

<comment><USER2> It is relatively trivial to integrate Twilio and email for 2FA/OTP and/or password resets etc. That's my personal method. I also use the jsonwebtoken package and passport-jwt typically for the JWT which keeps that all pretty clean and means I don't have to mess with doing any of the header parsing etc (not that it is that much work).

If you exclude the database access/update code from the auth portion of the setup and use passport with the supporting packages, you'll write probably on the order of less than ~200 lines of JS to handle all the standard auth type things (just did a rough count on one project I have). That included in my case using twilio to send 2fa and OTP codes via SMS (sends via email too but that uses a different library I wrote).

The choice of database and specific schema of course isn't factored in to those figures. For mongodb, it typically only adds an additional ~200 lines, but for postgres (no ORM tooling) it'll be more like 300-600 lines. But you will need to write this code no matter what if you want to maintain a user table, even if you use a third party, you'd just have a federated key instead of a username/password combo.

So in the end, I would say for < 300 lines of proper code (excluding db crud) you have the basic structure setup and working.

BTW -- I am excluding from my LOC counts above my middleware I wrote for things like logging, metrics, etc. But even including them wouldn't make it change by much.</comment></comment></comment>


Our schools are teaching children to be redundant – Futurology - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/5u64nc/in_the_age_of_robots_our_schools_are_teaching/ <comment><USER2> This is a tough topic. Most teachers, including myself, can't help but feel upset with the lack of understanding that people have about the profession. Sure, school can be used to teach students "about life" (as the top Reddit post says). However, a lot of parents take this too far and fail their children at home. Teachers are trained to teach students responsibility, caring, honesty, respect, self-regulation, and so many other skills. We do all of this through a broad curriculum set out by the government and almost entirely out of our control.

I understand that it's easy to look at the teaching situation and blame the teachers. Students are changing, education is changing. However, parents are a critical component in student learning and success. Many of the students (that aren't on plans for their educational difficulties or differences) that do not succeed, often aren't properly taught the basics at home. I know I might get a bunch of arguments against me. But we do need to take more factors than the ones this article and corresponding thread speak of.

<comment><USER2> As an added point, we must remember to listen to teachers more. Everyone seems to know how to teach these days, and often arbitrary opinion takes more weight than those actually trained in the profession. Kind of like how a similar effect happens with parenting, pet ownership, etc.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to invest 50k? - <AUTHOR> I have 50k in savings I'm willing to invest in the best option (the one with the best ROI-security ratio). I have no previous experience in investing nor in finance.<p>Anyone with experience who can help me? <comment><USER2> Buy 10K in US Gov I-Bonds before the end of the month. Buy another 10K January 1. Take the rest to vegas, or the stock market... whichever you prefer.</comment>


OpenIndiana Hipster 2018-10 (illumos/OpenSolaris Unix) Released - <AUTHOR> https://www.openindiana.org/2018/10/24/openindiana-hipster-2018-10-is-here/ <comment><USER2> I see that there are a number of different Solaris-derived OSes: Illumos, OpenIndiana, OmniOS... Given the fact that basically they all share a common ancestor (OpenSolaris) and the license (they're all CDDL iirc), wouldn't it be better to just join forces, given how niche those OSes are becoming ?

<comment><USER3> It is really confusing and it seems like they all share the same illumos as their common upstream. [0] I wonder what kind of 'scope' illumos has in comparison to the BSDs. The BSD's base installations seem to be complete OSes with some additional bits from 3rd parties but the table at [0] shows that these illumos distros differentiate between the used package manager and even the default userland.

Is there a reason why these Solaris forks tend to use the GNU userland instead of pushing their own like the BSDs?

[0] [https://wiki.illumos.org/display/illumos/Distributions](https://wiki.illumos.org/display/illumos/Distributions)

<comment><USER4> SchilliX appears to be missing from that list.

Jörg Schilling regularly mentions and contrasts the Schily Tools with GNU tools.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure if it's still in development. On sourceforge (!) it looks like there are no updates since 2014, and French wikipedia([https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schillix](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schillix)) says it's not been updated since 2012.

<comment><USER4> M. Schilling says that it is. You'll have to ask xem for further information.

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=760505445&oldid=76...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=760505445&oldid=760499068)

Certainly the Schily Tools bug ticketing system has seen activity within the last month, and there was a release on 2018-10-30 and one before that on 2018-10-11.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A puzzle: dissect a square into congruent pieces, all touching the center - <AUTHOR>

There's a math problem I've been working on for some time that looks like it's finally been solved.  To explain it to people I usually start with a warm-up:

    Cut a square into indentical pieces so
    that they all touch the center point.
 As I say, this is a warm up.  It's fairly easy to do, and serves to introduce the ideas involved. So we do that, and we move on.
Over the weekend, though, I wondered how many solutions there are to the above problem.  I rapidly came up with a small number, and was reasonably content.
Then a friend showed me another.  Then another friend found another.  Now I have rather more than I thought or expected.  Today, a work colleague came up with yet another.
How could I miss so many?  What are they all?
I invite the HN community to explore this puzzle/problem.  Maybe I still haven't got all the answers.
Who will start me off? <comment><USER2> I am not very interested in puzzles, math, or much else that this question relates to, but I am incredibly curious-- why is this question being asked?

I don't understand the significance of this problem.

So there are nearly infinitely many ways to accomplish this. What does that mean though?

What are the implications of there being infinitely many ways to do this? Why is it interesting?

<comment><AUTHOR> Some puzzles don't have "significance", they are simply puzzles. Some people find some (but not all) puzzles intriguing. Why do people do Sudoku? Or crosswords?

This particular problem is also an excellent example of learning to think "outside the box," insofar as almost everyone comes up with the same solutions, and almost no one comes up with _all_ the solutions.

Including me.

Finally, this is just a warm up to an unanswered question in math/puzzles. Solving that may turn out to be mundane, but it may lead to the development of new techniques and insights. You never know. It's like the Collatz Conjecture. Simple to state, no one knows if it's true, no one know how to prove (or disprove) it, and who knows what techniques may be developed to answer it.

You say there are "nearly infinitely many ways to accomplish this." Can I ask, what do you mean by "nearly infinite"? Anything that's not infinite is infinitely far away from being infinite, so I'm a little confused by your statement.

And learning to think about these things is an excellent exercise in logic and reasoning. Explaining solutions is superb training in communication.

And for some, it's fun.

<comment><USER2> >> not infinite is infinitely far away from infinite

Nit picky in my opinion, but the reason I didn't assign it a number and rather opted for the more generic "nearly infinite" is because there are a ton of possibilities.

Here is my idea for you and will eventually come up with most solutions (might miss some outliers, this is my <5 minutes of thought on the topic):

Write a program that shows a square and it's center point.

A single line increment out from the center point going at a random starting angle between 181 and 360 (in other words, they generally tend toward going left). The line moves the smallest amount possible each iteration (1 pixel for example).

After the line has moved one pixel, a new angle is picked for the line move, from 0-360, and it increments 1 more pixel. If the randomly generated line crosses the center line of the square (if you folded the square in half from left to right) force the line to randomly pick a new angle before incrementing.

Do not allow the line to cross over itself.

Now you have your first line. Take this line, replicate it, rotating it 90 degrees, then 180, then 270.

This is your first square. Set the program to keep generating new squares, add rules as you see fit.

Now you have more solutions to this puzzle than you can count.

Edit: This is pretty badly explained, but it is based on the idea of a single line leaving the midpoint, moving randomly until it reaches an edge. You then replicate that single line 3 more times, each rotating by 90 additional degrees.

<comment><AUTHOR> In essence, take any line from the center to the edge, and take three copies (giving four in total) rotated by 90 degrees. Provided they don't cross, that's a solution.

And that's one infinite family of solutions, one that I didn't (initially) find.

There are more.

Initially I had 5 actual solutions, and I thought I had them all. Then someone produced this infinite family, and I suddenly had my mind expanded. I've since found what I hope - but have not yet proved - is all solutions.

Can you find any more? You might not care, but that's the challenge. I find it akin to the best sort of programming, except it doesn't, in the end, actually _do_ anything.

<comment><USER2> I won't find any more solutions. I will let the program find them, which, given enough time should find every single possible solution.

Any line drawing variant is just the concept I've already outlined expanded.

 _So I guess my question is:_ Is the challenge in this finding other ways to generate solutions, even though a method that will generate all possible solutions has already been found?

<comment><AUTHOR> I must have mis-understood you. The method you have outlined - as I understand it - definitely will not find all solutions, and I don't see how you can think it would.

Perhaps you should explain it again. It seems like you find a squiggly line, rotate it 4 times by 90 degrees, say that's a solution, do it in all possible ways, and claim that's everything.

Have I misunderstood?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> By identical, do you allow for rotations - i.e. two pieces are identical if one can be oriented to perfectly overlay the other? If so, there are an infinite number of solutions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, but simply saying there are infinitely many solutions is not enough. There are infinitely many solutions, but there is more you can say.

It's a shame this will sink without making it to the front page - I'd really like to get the HN input before writing the blog post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can make any pinwheel-type shape with four wheels and can vary the line from center to edge in any path. This includes a bunch of spirally-looking things.

(Also you can just cut it in half similarly instead of in four.)

Picture:

[http://cl.ly/3K1i2K3O0p2f1U291636/Screen_shot_2011-05-25_at_...](http://cl.ly/3K1i2K3O0p2f1U291636/Screen_shot_2011-05-25_at_9.35.01_AM.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> So you have two infinite families - the generality is what I originally missed.

There are more ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Any straight line through the center point will create 2 identical halves.

Any 2 straight lines through the center point at 90 degrees to each other will create 4 identical pieces.

In both of the above cases each line segment from the center to the edge can be distorted in any way which does not intersect the edge of the square or any of the other lines and the distortion can be rotated 180 degrees in the first case or 90 degrees 3 times in the second to create new identical shapes.

The only special case seems to be using 4 lines to divide the square into 8 pieces which is, I think, the only configuration of 8 pieces.

I think that's every possible solution.

I'm weak at math, but I think that means there are an infinite number of configurations for each of an infinite number of configurations for both of the first 2 solutions, and then there's that 1 extra solution. So does that mean there are uncountably infinite solutions? I'm not sure how you would apply the diagonal method to this.

<comment><AUTHOR> You've found two infinite families and one sporadic solution.

There is another sporadic solution, and the 8 piece solution you've found is not, in fact a sporadic.

And yes, the infinities are uncountable.

<comment><USER6> _puzzles_

Oh, right - you can vary the shape of the diagonal lines, provided each "arm" has rotational symmetry about its mid-point.

OK, so we've got three infinite families and the trivial solution (only one piece - is that your sporadic solution?). I think that might be all: each piece can contain 4, 2, 1 or 1/2 of the original square's corners, since (lacuna) all pieces must contain the same number of corners and further subdividing the corners (into 1/3s, say) would mean some pieces don't touch the centre (another lacuna).

<comment><AUTHOR> OK, that's now the set of solutions I've got. You've also gone some way to showing them to be complete.

More to do, though.

And now do it for an equilateral triangle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 1) Start from the centre and reach any of the sides following a curve, such that as you traverse the curve your distance from the centre should increase, e.g., a circular arc that is less than a semi-circle. (The construction of this curve gives [at least] an uncountably infinite cubed number of degeneracies.)

2) Now take the reflection of this curve wrt the centre, and attach it to the original curve. This will give two-congruent pieces.

3) You can take the resulting curve and rotate it around the centre by pi/2. The two curves will give 4 congruent pieces.

The restriction on the original curve, ie. its monotonic behaviour, guarantees that the curves in steps 2 and 3 will not intersect.

<comment><AUTHOR> That gives two infinite families. However, those families contain more examples than your process generates, there is another infinite family, there is a sporadic, and I have just been shown another example for which I am unsure if it is a sporadic, or one member of an infinite family.

Not only do I not know everything, I truly don't know very much at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Suppose the square can be dissected into n pieces. Then any symmetry of the square induces a permutation of those n pieces. Hence, the symmetry group of the square (D_8) must be embeddable as a subgroup of S_n. Hence there is no dissection into three pieces, since |D_8| = 8, which does not divide |S_3| = 6.

I suspect this line of argument can be taken further, but wanted to post it before someone else did :-)

 __Edit __: no, that doesn't work, because we already have a dissection into two pieces, and |S_2| = 2. Dammit. Not all of the symmetries of the square must map pieces to pieces.

</comment><comment><USER6> You can divide it into eight isoceles (pi/4, pi/2, pi/4) triangles, by quartering up/down and then quartering diagonally.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's one solution. There are more ...

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A heart-felt "Thank You" to those of you who have contributed and up-voted. Alas, as I type, this item has now slipped to the third page of HN and is unlikely to be seen by "the masses."

So it is only you, the cognoscenti, who have had the privilege (if it be such) of discussing the dissection.

Again, thank you.

<comment><USER2> This is #1 on my "Ask" page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Woah! Cool! Thanks ...

I wonder how many people read the "Ask" page.</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon HQ2 Skeptics Hope to Derail Arlington Incentives - <AUTHOR> https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2019/02/19/amazon-skeptics-hope-to-derail-arlington.html?ana=wtop_bd <comment><USER2> Honestly, traffic is already bad enough around here and good tech talent is really hard to find. I hope it doesn't happen.</comment>


Why is B&N performing well as a business while Borders has filed for bankruptcy? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Borders-Books/Why-is-Barnes-and-Noble-performing-well-as-a-business-while-Borders-has-filed-for-bankruptcy/answer/Mark-Evans-9 <comment><USER2> Because of their online presence, and their partnership with Starbucks.</comment>


5 Handy Tips for Working with PDFs on Linux - <AUTHOR> https://sweetcode.io/tips-for-working-pdfs-on-linux/ <comment><USER2> There are some other ways to slice and compose PDFs under Linux. The pdfpages package for LaTeX is pretty handy, but it's a bit awkward if you don't need LaTeX. Then there's PyPDF2. Although I don't think it fully supports Python3, it works fine under Python2 and has been quite useful for me.

</comment><comment> photon-torpedo Does anybody know a Linux PDF viewer which can add annotations? That is, annotations that properly show up in other PDF viewers like Adobe's. My solution still is to use a Windows program (PDF Xchange Viewer) via wine, which works reasonably well, except it sometimes crashes when saving the PDF (crashes after the save, so you can just reopen it; and wine 1.7.15 seems to be immune). But I'd prefer a native solution.

<comment><USER2> Okular will do this: [https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/kdegraphics/okular/annotatio...](https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/kdegraphics/okular/annotations.html)

I haven't double-checked to see if the poppler annotations render properly with acroread, but they are definitely saved into the PDF.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who is looking for a co-founder? - <AUTHOR> Post here if you have a startup or an idea and you are looking for a co-founder to join you. <comment><USER2> I actively develop [https://reqloot.com](https://reqloot.com). It is a cryptocurrency treasure hunt game, currently with 100-150 active daily users and generating revenue.

I'm open to having a cofounder if anyone sees the game as an opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey everyone! I've been working on a women's health side project that I'm planning to transition to full-time in early 2020. I have a consulting + VC background that's focused in digital health. Only requirements are (1) that you can provide the technical expertise I lack :) and (2) you're passionate about expanding access to functional medicine resources. Extra bonus if you're passionate about women's health / hormonal imbalances specifically. If you're interested in learning more visit our website (pollie.co) or Instagram (handle: pollie.co). Shoot me a note at email@example.com to set up a time to chat!

</comment><comment><USER4> I was employee #1 at Datanyze and helped us bootstrap to $1M ARR, specifically by generating leads and closing deals (both individually and as a manager). I took the last few months off to travel and build out some ideas (self-taught coder), but I'm always looking for technical founders looking for help selling their product.

Email me at jonhearty at gmail dot com.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm looking for a technical co-founder to join me in a legaltech startup. Currently doing idea validation on two projects and will go with one of them once conviction forms. Legaltech isn't sexy but it's a good space with a lot of opportunities.

If anyone is interested in speaking, please e-mail me at roman at hyperscaleresearch dot com

Thanks!!

</comment><comment><USER6> I created this which I am now monetizing by building extra features for paying clients:

[https://github.com/etewiah/property_web_builder](https://github.com/etewiah/property_web_builder)

Would love to work with someone (coder or business) who can help me accelerate the monetization process.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have created a prototype that allows for the deep integration of text and data, with endpoints for NLP and machine learning.

What would you want to do as a co-founder?

<comment><AUTHOR> I created this post for the whole community, not for myself specifically. The same way there are posts for those hiring or looking for a job. The same idea as this thread posted a few months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20266463](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20266463)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> wow, best luck for you. hope u can find some nice project</comment>


Twitter (TWTR) Stock Spikes Following Fake Takeover Bid Report - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestreet.com/story/13218004/1/twitter-twtr-stock-spikes-following-fake-takeover-bid-report.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Just in case it isn't clear from the article -- a fake site was registered at a new TLD and made to look nearly exactly like the real news site. A fake story was then published and promoted in an apparent bid to move the market. It will be interesting to see if the SEC can track down who did this...</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best way to limit daily news consumption? - init-mtx

Right now I mainly browse reddit (endlessly), HN, have a few RSS feeds I follow and then check google news from time to time for major events.
All in all the time committed is huge and surfing reddit is a waste of time.
I came upon a recommendation here called Hacker News Digest http://www.hndigest.com/ which really transformed the way I read HN. It gives me 30 of the top posts everyday and that's enough for me.  I mostly learn from HN so it's great.
I'd love for there to be something like this to exist for the rest of the web. Maybe just rss an rss aggregator that limits your consumption daily.
Does anybody have any ideas? Trying to take control but still stay informed <comment><USER2> While this is more tactical than strategic, I've saved untold thousands of reading hours by firmly avoiding three kinds of stories: 1) predictions of the future (which are almost always wrong, especially when proffered by experts), 2) opinionated evaluations (especially by experts), which only rarely offer any insight, and 3) anything else that will expire in a week or a month. Almost everything about an upcoming election will be worthless very soon; this is a surprisingly broad category.

Notice that these three categories are all interesting, but with very low information value. You can train yourself to detect a high interest/information ratio and turn away when it goes off.

<comment><USER3> Good call. What are some headlines that scream these categories?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> re: getting control of the habit: The best way to break a bad habit is through aversive conditioning ==> Electric shock classical conditioning.

I discovered how effective electric shock was a few years ago and created an electric shock wristband called Pavlok (pavlok.com). Here are 21 studies on the efficacy of shock for bad habits: [http://pavlok.com/blog/21-scientific- studies-on-electric-sho...](http://pavlok.com/blog/21-scientific-studies-on- electric-shock-aversion-therapy/)

I actually built a chrome extension that does this automatically. Get the pavlok, pair it with your phone, and download the chrome extension. You can add in a list of blacksites. If you access a blacksite, your wristband will vibrate, then shock you, to train away the unwanted behavior.

<comment><USER5> Not sure if you are masochist or a genius.

But I think you are a GENIUS and have a good product.

Please do a IndieGOGO campaign.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A good way to get started (for me) was to quantify how much time I was actually wasting. I started using RescueTime[0] and realized how many hours I was wasting on sites like Reddit and HN. Just being able to see that was a good motivator - but it wasn't enough on its own. I then started using StayFocusd[1] to limit my time on sites that don't contribute to my happyness/etc.

After a couple weeks of StayFocusd, I was very rarely spending more than my allotted one hour from 8am-7pm on those sites. And I realized. I'm not missing out on anything. I have spent 10 hours less browsing those sites in the last week and I don't feel like I've missed out on anything. Instead, I had 10 more hours of my life to do things like read books, exercise, and get things done.

[0] [https://www.rescuetime.com/](https://www.rescuetime.com/)

[1] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stayfocusd/laankej...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stayfocusd/laankejkbhbdhmipfmgcngdelahlfoji?hl=en)

<comment><USER7> I will vouch for this method. Measure how much time you are spending and then decide if its worth the effort.

I personally found I was wasting 1-2 hours a day on news alone. That just isn't a productive use of time.

Another piece of advice, for the next month change nothing, write down what crazy crap is high on the news chain. Look back at the months "news". It is highly likely you will find that most of it is just fluff at best and needless, and I mean this word, propaganda.

Right now I only tend to look at news sites on Fridays and then only for a day to catch up with what happened in general. Past that not dealing with news daily has made me a much less cynical person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8>
        127.0.0.1    www.reddit.com reddit.com i.reddit.com

In /etc/hosts works for me, the conscious effort required to remove it reminds me not to.

<comment><USER9> I do this as well. I still check news, but the affirmative effort required limits consumption. It's not as advanced as some solutions but it's enough to keep me from getting distracted most of the time.

I wish I could easily block my personal email without blocking my work email, though (I use Gmail for both).

Also, using Pocket has been good for me. If I see something interesting on HN during work hours, I'll add it to Pocket and read it later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd suggest Rescuetime and Stayfocusd, but it seems to me that perhaps something bigger is missing. Do you have a clear goal and purpose in life ? Are your days/weeks/months/years planned and thought through where you want to go ?

Someone who does, doesn't waste time reading mindlessly. He allots daily time for news, keeps a limited set of resources for that and picks intentionally the topics he will only benefit from. Learning to read/skim faster is also a nice tool for that.

</comment><comment><USER11> I fell into a habit of wasting significant amounts of time reading HN and Reddit. I found that I drastically cut back when I installed Mind The Time for Firefox[1]. Seeing the sheer amount of time I was spending on various sites brought about a feeling of shame and I've worked to prevent it happening again since.

I've cut back on reading Reddit as it's just a total junk source and waste of time now. I still spend a little time every day reading HN as it's of higher quality and generally offers something of substance. Then I skim The Guardian and The Telegraph once or twice per day to keep up with the general news.

I also found a site called SkimFeed[2], I believe I first found it on here actually, which I use pretty heavily for skimming through the headlines.

[1][https://addons.mozilla.org/En-us/firefox/addon/mind-the- time...](https://addons.mozilla.org/En-us/firefox/addon/mind-the-time/)

[2][http://skimfeed.com/](http://skimfeed.com/)

<comment> init-mtx skimfeed is just what I am looking for. Just I'd want it to pull my own sources.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Drill down to the key topics you _need_ to stay on top of, find reputable sources for those, then try and kill the rest (or at least leave it to your spare time, using your phone in bed, whatever).

We do stuff like Hacker News Digest but for numerous programming related areas, such as [http://javascriptweekly.com/](http://javascriptweekly.com/) [http://rubyweekly.com/](http://rubyweekly.com/) [http://dbweekly.com/](http://dbweekly.com/) (and several other) and 240,000 people trust us with this each week now. There are many great folks doing similar things in other niches, however.

</comment><comment><USER13> I find that separating this process into two steps:

1\. Finding things to read, and

2\. Reading them

really works for me.

I spend some time most mornings trawling through my feeds, HN etc. and queue up what I want to read to my read-it-later app of choice (Readability). I then get on with my day doing normal work. Later, usually late evenings, I catch up on the reading I've queued up for the day.

This way, I tend to stick to just the original list of things I've queued up to read, and only get to refresh the queue the next morning. This, by design, prevents the temptation to recursively chase down all links and related content to whatever I'm reading, which I find eliminates the biggest cause of the time sink.

</comment><comment><USER14> I probably spend too much time on HN and Reddit, but I think I have better control over domestic, international, and economic news: I try to use just a few high quality sources.

First, I subscibe to Catherine Austin Fitts's Solari Report which yields a very good alternative view of how the economy, global power, etc. work.

Secondly, if a news story interests me then I go to news.google.com and read the same story as published in two or three different countries. There is a ton of bias in what material is covered in USA news sources.

</comment><comment><USER15> Leechblock(Firefox add-on) did the job for me; you can make the websites available only for some amount of time per day/week and then they'll be blocked. The effect of this after a while was that I lost interest on reading news endlessly. In the general case, I think that first you need some tools that force you to change your behaviour; after a while it becomes a habit and you won't need then anymore.

</comment><comment><USER16> I stopped watching/reading all forms of news including television, newspapers, Google News, Yahoo, whatever. Trust me, you won't miss anything.

</comment><comment><USER17> Instead of going through all these aggregators and digests, I just follow the links and news that my tribes - whether IRL, IRC or Slack – share. They act as my curators and since we all have similar interests I trust that most things they post will be worth my time to consume.

If you can get some curators to do this for you, then you can start blocking these sites from your /etc/hosts and not look back.

<comment><USER18> I use Twitter for this, but that requires an investment in curating your Twitter stream/lists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Trigger-action planning. (Official literature calls it "Implementation Intentions", but that's a terrible name).

The gist of it is to tie a particular sensory experience to a particular action you want to take. Putting a pull-up bar on your bedroom door is a great example - then, every time you go through the door, you can exercise with the pull-up bar. For reddit, you can either trigger off of "opening a reddit tab" or scrolling to the bottom of the current page, and close the tab when that happens.

Another approach is to figure out what you get out of browsing reddit, and finding better ways of getting the same stuff. Odds are it's a combination of a low-risk activity, encountering novel information, and a strategy for not doing things that you "should" do but don't want to. If you're reliably getting safe and interesting information from a reading list and procrastinating through exercise, then you may well find that you've solved the urge to visit reddit.

</comment><comment><USER18> Big change for me was finally making the switch from RSS to Twitter. I didn't really do it consciously, I just found myself checking my RSS feeds less when I was busy, as getting through a lot of outdated news while still not missing the stuff I'm interested in took a lot of time. At the same time, I found myself continuing to check Twitter and Facebook for social conversation purposes, but finding that most of the things I found interesting when I finally got around to checking my RSS feeds were pieces I'd already found via Twitter or Facebook or just a coworker shooting it out. I've now completely stopped checking my RSS feeds after moving the few sites on there I didn't already follow on Twitter. I haven't noticed that I've missed anything I would have otherwise caught (anecdotal, but measured by how often links sent to me by friends or mentioned in conversation are ones I didn't see), and the time I spend on news has cratered.

<comment><USER18> Also, if you are like me and use pinned tabs for the sites you find yourself on the most, close the HN and Reddit tabs. I spend time on both sites, but not having them pinned makes the decision to visit them an active one, rather than (psychologically) constant browsing.

Also, related to switching to Twitter (this applies to Reddit too) - <AUTHOR> make the investment in lists, mute people who don't tweet anything you are interested in that you are hesitant to unfollow, or be rigorous in curating who you follow. The noise of Twitter is by far the most common reason I hear for not using Twitter to replace RSS, but it's something you can pretty easily address in 30 minutes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Don't read reddit. Or at least read very little.

I have very few news sites in the folder I "open all in tabs" every morning: Google News, /. (I'm nostalgic, it's not terribly useful), HN (via hckrnews.com with Link Visitor to mark as read), and reddit.com/r/science (plus Environment Canada, Michael Geist, and XKCD).

I check those most mornings, then check /. and hckrnews a few times a day.

Sometimes I want more, but I've learned to resist that want. Between HN and Google News, I encounter most of the things I need to know. And, of course, I see news stories in my FB feed, shared by friends, mostly dross, but some few nuggets.

And I never go beyond the first page of any of those (except /., I tend to work back to the last story seen, but that takes very little time).

Imperfect heuristic for validating the _I encounter most of the things I need to know_ statement: Never, not once, has my life been affected in any meaningful way by a story with which I was unfamiliar, I have rarely been surprised professionally by unfamiliar news (I am a security consultant) and never with any impact (interesting, I will look that up and get back to you).

We are all here likely to be voracious readers, curious beyond measure. We. Do. Not. Need. To. Know. Everything. Your brain is likely already full.

As someone else mentioned, willpower helps too, and if you don't have willpower, get a hobby you like, and then start examining how much of your hobby time you spend reading news that has little/no impact on your life.

Note: I have never used RSS, have a twitter account but hardly ever go there, rarely listen to radio news and never watch TV news. I do not seek to optimize the amount of information I consume, I seek for and seem to have found "pretty darned good enough".

</comment><comment><USER21> A large part of my 'solution' has to be to listen to the radio for non-tech news. It's become part of my "don't stare into screens right before you want to go to sleep" ritual, with a nice side-effect of helping me regulate my bedtime.

Pick a source you're comfortable with (being british, I listen to the bbc world service - it's quite international but with a british bias, which suits me fine). Listen to it on their schedule, not yours (no podcasts, live broadcasts). This way you get a 30 minute summary, select few comments from people with basic literacy, with no "you might also be interested in", no sidebars, no opening a few tangents in tabs, etc.

</comment><comment><USER22> Find something you enjoy more than reddit, and which entices you to spend your free time more meaningfully.

I used to browse reddit excessively, but then I realized how much more I like HN, and started reading some more books and getting more exercise.

I still check reddit occasionally, (I have multi-reddits set up to aggregate the few things I care about), but I get tired of it pretty quickly because I'd rather be reading a book or going outside, or reading HN.

I like HN more, but my time on here naturally comes to an end when I've seen the 1-3 interesting things on the front page that I might want to read. After I've seen the things that are most interesting, it's more worth my time to do something else.

</comment><comment><USER23> I trim the fat every now an again, everything is read via Feedly and I have it on my phone to really quick scanning over whilst doing menial things like eating breakfast or traveling. Marking interesting stuff for reading later.

The major time saver is really not reading or replying to comments. Hackernews is the opposite to that rule where most of the time the comments are more insightful than the article.

Think of it in term of signal to noise ratio. How much good information have you gained and how much did you have to wade through to get there. Comments sections on websites are usually high noise. Reddit is no exception in my experience. There might be microcosms of insight but finding them is too hard.

<comment><USER18> Another good tip - periodically looking at where you are spending your time reading and cutting those that are just taking up your time (ESPN headlines Twitter was one for me - anything noteworthy to me gets to me through sites/channels I follow for more specific reasons) will make a difference. It's tough to use this strategy for Reddit and HN though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> [http://matt.might.net/articles/productivity-tips-hints- hacks...](http://matt.might.net/articles/productivity-tips-hints-hacks-tricks- for-grad-students-academics/)

[http://matt.might.net/articles/cripple-your- technology/](http://matt.might.net/articles/cripple-your-technology/)

He blocks reddit and other time sinkholes, uses a tablet or phone to waste time on those sites as you can put it down or move it out of your workspace if you don't want to be distracted.

<comment><USER18> Limiting consumption to tablet/smartphone is actually a really good idea, especially if you use a service like Pocket for saving things you'd get more value out of on desktop. I might try this. The only limitation is participating in Reddit comments and HN comments is a lot more difficult on a tablet or phone (although that might be a feature).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't see how you're going to find a "best of" for reddit. There are so many subreddits that everyone will be different. Although the frontpage of reddit already seems to give you an overview of all the top content in the subreddits you're subscribed to, if you're logged in. Just limit yourself to the frontpage, I guess.

<comment> init-mtx Reddit can be done via the rss of the subreddit. Each has it's own.

<comment><USER25> So what? It would display the same thing as going to reddit, which is what op wants to avoid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I built a twitter bot that tweets the top HN stories from 24 hours ago. I like to visit it on Monday to catch up after the weekend. It's a lot less content than the RSS feed.

[https://twitter.com/icymihn](https://twitter.com/icymihn)

</comment><comment><USER27> Willpower.

<comment><USER28> Willpower is a finite resource, I'd rather use it as little as possible and keep it for more important matters.

So ideally, in cases that you know before hand that you are going to need your willpower, like reading HN, you'd be better off arranging your life so that you don't have the option to spend as much time, and reserve your willpower for cases you cannot predict or control.

<comment><USER29> Willpower is Not a Finite Resource

[http://lifehacker.com/5967249/your-willpower-is-only-a- finit...](http://lifehacker.com/5967249/your-willpower-is-only-a-finite- resource-if-you-believe-it-is)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Startup Digest is another useful one if you prefer the email digest system.</comment>